


the last winter

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:47:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Fifty-eight days, seventeen hours and forty-five minutes before the end of all things, Ekaterin gets out of bed in the morning.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last winter

**Author's Note:**

> For avendya for the trope meme: "apocalypse".

Fifty-eight days, seventeen hours and forty-five minutes before the end of all things, Ekaterin gets out of bed in the morning and says, as if in a dream: "Your father's grandmother. His mother's mother."

Miles rolls out of bed straight onto his feet and says, "Yes. Not one quarter, then, it's - oh, it's a quarter and a sixteenth, I can't work it out right now, Ekaterin, you…" He abruptly realises he's crying. "I love you."

They sit together on the edge of their bed in silence for a few minutes, holding hands, looking up through the window at the unclouded sky.

*

The population of Komarr has grown all it can without wholly overloading the fragile infrastructure of the domes; similarly, on Sergyar, the limiting factor is long-term food production. Calculations and simulations have been run and re-run, and the Barrayaran government itself is limiting further immigration. As Gregor has put it in innumerable public addresses, the Imperium will live on if only it is allowed to do so. To flood both other worlds with innumerable refugees would be to overbalance their only chance of survival.

The people listen, as much as they ever have, and more, when Gregor speaks: they all know where he will be when it happens.

*

"Tsipsis," Miles is yelling into the comconsole, "all the documentation you can find. Birth certificates, wait, I don't know if they had them then - maybe a passport? Hurry, hurry!"

"Shall we wake the children?" asks Roic, coming to attention. 

"No," Ekaterin says, tiredly. "Let them sleep a little longer."

*

The Betan and Escobaran governments, meanwhile, operate a formal system for immigration. The strictness with which the system is administered is itself compassionate - they are trying, as hard as they can, alongside everyone else. Anyone of Betan citizenship, Betan birth, or at least one Betan parent, may return to the other land of their people.

From Beta, they won't even be able to see the object arrive. They may never see the debris; it is thought the shock of planetary impact may close the wormhole temporarily, opening only in the midst of Barrayaran nuclear winter.

*

The civil peace sustains like glass, brittle, with all the frightening depths below clearly visible, but it holds. The wintry streets are deserted as they make their journey to the Betan consulate.

"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan," says the agent, stern and firm with a fathomless kindness beneath. "We have discussed it. Without at least one Betan parent…" He stops. "You yourself qualify."

Miles closes his eyes for a moment and says, steadily, "Not without my wife. Not without my brother." They are in the shadow of the Imperial Residence here; Ekaterin knows who he means by _brother_. "Would you read the statutory provision for me, please?"

The man lifts it and reads: "In this time of Barryaran emergency immigration to Beta Colony is permitted to no one but those individuals who hold Betan citizenship, were born on Beta Colony or have at least one Betan parent or otherwise have more than one quarter Betan blood…"

Miles slaps his papers down on the counter. "My mother is Cordelia Naismith," he said, "formerly of the Betan Astronomical Survey. My father's father married a Betan woman called Ealasaid. I am five-eighths Betan; my children are five-sixteenths Betan. _More than one quarter_ Betan blood."

The silence, for a few moments, is absolute. Then the man says, "Names?"

"Sasha, Helen and Elizabeth Vorkosigan," Miles says, and starts signing.

*

Forty-eight days, eleven hours and sixteen minutes before the end of all things, they're almost ready to leave. Ekaterin says, quietly: "You didn't write their titles on the forms."

Miles shakes his head. "They can't take those with them. Let them be Vor; it's enough, now. I won't let Sasha hold the Countship to nothing."

Ekaterin says, one last time: "Miles, you could… for them, you could go…"

Still steady, Miles says, "They'll have Mark, and Kareen, and Grandma Naismith, and all their Naismith cousins. And maybe…"

Cordelia will take the children to Beta Colony, and return. They don't know yet if she will then take the journey a second time. 

"It's nearly time," Ekaterin says, looking out of the window. She's feeling curiously numb, cold within. They will go out to the shuttleport with their children, shortly; take them safely through the last snow that they will ever see.

**end.**


End file.
